Trinity
by Vegetarian Salad
Summary: Sand Sibs oneshots. Sandcest is not ... planned? Chapter 5, in which Temari fastforwards, and Gaara pauses.
1. Chapter 1

A story swap with **Furuido. **I wanted NaruSasu; she wanted – er – Kankurou and peanut butter. -.-

The knife dove deep into the sticky substance, burying itself to the hilt, and swept back up, sliding through it, stealing some of it away. It descended more gently toward the bread that awaited it on the countertop, and the peanut butter was smeared across its white surface.

Kankurou whistled while he made his sandwich, cheerful as always that there was edible food to be found in their kitchen (i.e. food Temari hadn't cooked), and was ecstatic that someone had had the sense to buy peanut butter, which he loved. It was his favorite thing to eat, with the friendly way it stuck to the roof of his mouth, and nothing tasted better with a glass of milk.

Besides that, it was a lunch food, the kind that was best eaten in the early afternoon. Lunch was the one meal that didn't depress him. Breakfast should be eaten with siblings before wandering as a group out the door to start their days of schoolwork and training. Dinner was the kind when families should slump wearily into their chairs, smiling around at each other and recounting busy days. Lunch was the only meal that could be successfully eaten alone.

Kankurou's siblings were distant creatures that preferred solitude, found life easier within it. Not since Temari, as the eldest, had tied on her first forehead protector as a genin had they eaten a meal as a family. They had never been much of a family anyway. They had always been almost afraid of each other, tiptoeing in circles to avoid each other's company until they had to be a team.

They were more of a team than a family, and that depressed Kankurou.

It had gotten better, of course. Gaara was still quiet, but they weren't so terrified of him anymore. He retreated almost automatically to his solitude now, even when they requested his company, like he was scared of scaring them, but Kankurou wondered if he was afraid they would eventually shun him. He wondered sometimes if he knew hoe much they cared about him.

His sandwich became whole, two pieces of bread smothered in peanut butter, pressed together inescapably and soon to be devoured by the hungry jounin who had mad it. All he needed was a glass of milk.

When he turned to the cupboard, he caught a flash of red in his peripheral vision, and his head lifted to look at his brother standing in the doorway, his blue eyes surveying the room and its activities with vague interest. Kankurou smiled when his gaze settled on him and didn't move. "Hey. Are you hungry?"

His previous task forgotten, he pulled out a second plate and went to work on making another sandwich, figuring that, if Gaara left the room like he thought he was going to, that was just two sandwiches for him. His whistling held back the silence in the room like a flashlight staying off monsters, and he found the metaphor amusing. Eventually, he spun toward the table, and halted abruptly, the two plates poised midair.

A full glass of milk sat on the table, and Gaara was in the process of pouring a second. Looking up, his eyebrow quirked in an "Is this okay?" gesture, as if he was unsure how to do anything properly when it came to normalcy.

But Kankurou grinned, setting the plates on the table, and they sat down, eating the sandwiches he had just put so much love into making. They chewed slowly, prolonging this moment. Silence filled the room, comfortable and light, and lunch didn't seem as lonely anymore.

The quiet shook into non-existence as a door opened and slammed closed. Temari's face appeared in the doorway, blinking at them in puzzlement. Kankurou smiled at her; Gaara ignored her, focusing on his sandwich; she smiled, sitting down beside the redhead. After a moment, food had made its way to Temari, and she was talking with Kankurou across the table. Gaara didn't speak, but a ghost of a smile haunted his lips as he listened to them. Long after they had finished eating, and their plates had been pushed into a stack in the middle of the table, the three sat there together.

"You know," Kankurou sat back, squinting through his purple face paint into the sunlight beaming through the window. "We should do this more often."

"Yeah, for a team, we don't know much about each other." Temari's blonde head bobbed in agreement as she absently pressed her finger to the crumbs littering the table.

"We're family," Gaara offered quietly, eyes downcast, "aren't we?"

Stillness followed his profound statement, and the almost innocent way he had said it. His older siblings stared at him, unsure of how to react, and suddenly Kankurou's grin reignited. "Of course, Gaara."

Lunch for them became to the time of day when they came together, recounting their mornings, talking about whatever came to them. Where, before the afternoon had been a lonely time, now it was the time when they remembered what life had been like when they were young, when death wasn't always waiting patiently on their doorstep, and a monster wasn't constantly controlling a young man from beneath his skin. They remembered that they were a team, a good team, but they were a good team because they were a family.

Kankurou thought peanut butter tasted even better now.


	2. Chapter 2

Gaara's head was nestled into the crook of his elbow, back hunched, the dark lids of his eyes glued shut. His breath came slow and easy through his nose, his brow smooth of worry. A warm breeze stole through the open window, and a paper pinned beneath his thin pale fingers fluttered, his red hair brushing softly across the tattoo on his forehead.

Kankurou leaned against the doorframe of his brother's office, shaking his head and chuckling. He was fifteen years old – a fifteen-year-old Kazekage – and leading an entire village. It didn't surprise him in the least that the one place he ever slept was at his desk, trying to cope with paperwork. He imagined it would even wear an insomniac out.

"Do you think we should wake him?"

His eyes shifted. His sister had the kind of voice – deep, slow, strong – that never startled him. "When was the last time he slept?" He hadn't meant it as an answer, but it became one, and he nodded in his direction. "It seems to be leaving him alone now too."

Temari's mouth formed a close resemblance to a smile. Kankurou figured she had forgotten how to _really _smile, that that upward twitch of her lips was the best she could do now. "The elders say he has control of it now, that he can force it back."

He nodded. "Yeah, but will it last?" The question sounded so pessimistic, coated in fear. Would Gaara's strength be enough to outlive the thing inside him? He would always be waiting for the day it broke.

"We'll help him." It was a whisper, a frightening display of hope from the normally-negative girl. "He can do it. He can live his whole life without that thing ever getting out again. We can help him." Her blue eyes were deep with a fierceness that hadn't, in years, escaped her exhaustion, determination making her fists clench. "He's our brother. It's up to us to take care of him." Somehow her tone stayed even. "We have to make up for all the years we didn't, or couldn't."

Kankurou stared at her, then grinned. "You sounded like Mom there for a second." Her fan smacked roughly into the back of his head as she stalked past him into the room, and he chuckled, rubbing at the wounded area. "What're you doing, Temari?"

"He has work to do. We can't let him sleep forever." Even so, her voice was soft, her steps light. "Gaara," she shook his shoulder gently when she reached him, and blue irises appeared between dark lids, and she smiled. "How about some dinner? It's past sundown."

Kankurou snorted noticeably. _So much for making him work. _He smiled for his brother. "Usually beds are more comfortable."

Gaara didn't answer, as he slowly righted himself in his chair. He was still such a child, Kankurou realized, in the way he rubbed a fist against his bleary eyes, an indent in his pale cheek where a fold of his shirt sleeve had been pressed against it. It took him a moment to orient his sleep-soaked brain, and then he was the same as ever, already back to signing off on mission papers.

Temari was making her way back to the door. "We'll have someone send you something to eat." She _did _make use of her more maternal tones, and that was not an offer. She hadn't been joking when she said she'd take care of him.

"Hey, don't come home too late, Gaara." Kankurou's grin had returned. "If you sleep at night, maybe you'll get some work done."

The Kazekage's glare was pointed, but only in the most affectionate of ways. As they left, and he shuffled through papers, he murmured, "I'll be home soon."


	3. Chapter 3

Note from the Author: So this is a reworking of _**Furuido's**_ story "Kaaramari," written with her permission, of course.

This is the second story I've written with a character obsessing over his reflection. -.-

0

Gaara stared at his reflection, watching his expression for any sign of _anything_, any revealing facial tick, any assurance or lack of assurance in himself.

He sat before his brother's mirror, as he had never seen any use for one of his own. But, suddenly, it seemed so necessary. He needed to know for himself, to understand why –

"You're not going to find it, Gaara." Kankurou leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, his hat hanging from his hand, brown hair frazzled. "It's not there."

Gaara didn't flinch when he sat down beside him. Flinching wasn't even in his system of responses; he had never had to defend himself, after all. "Kankurou," his voice was low.

"Don't even say it." Kankurou spun his chair to face him, purple hips frowning at his little brother's stoic face. "I say the same thing every time you ask." Gaara didn't even blink when the older boy picked up a brush soaked in purple paint and smeared it carefully across his pale cheek.

They sat there for more than an hour, by Gaara's reckoning, as Kankurou slowly applied his make-up to his brother's face, with the precision of an artist perfecting a masterpiece. Gaara's eyes remained fixed on his face, his own expressionless, and, somehow, he didn't wonder why his brother was doing this.

Finally, with a satisfied sigh and a grin, Kankurou leaned back, turning Gaara's chair back to the mirror. He looked foreign to himself, with the make-up, but at the same time, he looked so much like his brother he didn't understand how he'd never seen it before. It only prompted the question that continued to nag his mind.

Kankurou stood up, smiling slightly as he saw for himself with his face next to Gaara's just how obvious it was, in their mouths and the shapes of their eyes, that they were brothers.

Gaara's eyes dropped, and the crease around his lips that was sadness showed itself.

He looked up again when Kankurou's hand settled on his shoulder. "No, Gaara," he answered the unspoken question. "You don't look like a monster."


	4. Chapter 4

Note from the Author: I'm not completely sure what the prompt for this was.

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"What a day," Temari murmured, slipping from her sandals and leaning her fan against the wall. "Kankurou," she shuffled into their living room as she freed her hair from her pigtails. "Gaara's not home yet?"

Her brother sat on the floor, surrounded by tools, his disassembled puppet laid across his lap. He shook his head. "He won't be back till later. He's in council meetings all day." He looked up. "You look beat; what were you up to today?"

She grimaced, resting her head and shoulder against the doorframe. "Well, as patrol captain, I had to make the weekly rounds of the stations today to make sure everything and everybody was in proper working order." Her eyes fell closed. "It goes without saying that they get pretty lonely up there. They were all practically drooling when they remembered their captain was a woman."

Kankurou snickered. "Please, you're no woman."

Her head shot to attention. "_What_?"

He shrugged. "You are not a woman?"

She stood straight, hands on her hips. "How am I _not _a woman?"

"Well," he leaned forward, a hand on his knee supporting him. "You punch like a man, you eat like a man, you definitely _belch _like a man. You might as well be a man. You're definitely not a woman."

Temari glared dangerously, and, to his surprise, stalked away, muttering to herself about stupid little brothers that need to be taught a thing or two.

He blinked after her, confused and uneasy that she hadn't pummeled him where he sat. Basically, that meant he should be expecting something far more scarring in the near future. He shrugged, returning to the repair of his weapon. He might as well do something productive with the last moments of his life.

0

His scars came half an hour later, in the form of something soft and black slamming into the side of his face. Peeling it off his shoulder, he identified the weapon as silk panties. _What the -?_

"Not a woman, huh?" Temari dropped a basket of clothes beside her, a lacy camisole hanging by its strap from her index finger. "I'll show you _womanly._"

Oh, yes, this was scarring. Kankurou figured there was nothing more emotionally-traumatizing than being bombarded with his sister's pretty intimates. Unfortunately, she was very much a woman in the fact that she didn't take insults lightly, and despite his wails for mercy, she didn't stop her onslaught.

"I'm as much of a woman as any kunoichi can get!" Temari was yelling, hurling bras at him. "_And_, I'm strong enough to kick any man's ass _because _I am a woman and a jounin and a damned great ninja!"

"Stop, Temari!" Kankurou was shouting too, his arms lifted in defense before his face, his puppet pulled up in front of him, taking the brunt of the flying underwear. "I get it, I get it!"  
0

Gaara sighed softly, trudging up the walk to his front door. He could already hear his brother's shrieks, which could only mean he had said something stupid to Temari, who was now simply waiting for him to cry 'uncle.' Stepping inside, the noises were distinctly louder, and he took his time entering their living room, where he could tell the beating was taking place. Of course, the sight he found was not the one he expected and, if he was adept at showing his emotions, he would have been a strange mix of confusion and shock.

Temari, realizing he was there, froze, her arm poised to throw, a lacy purple bra in her fist. Kankurou was cowering on the floor, arms folded protectively over his head, underwear draped over his shoulders and knees, his body shaking with something between laughter and tears. When he realized the attack had seized, he cracked a wary eye. Both siblings opened their mouths to explain at once.

Gaara lifted a hand, signaling them to not speak, because he didn't want to know, and walked between them into the kitchen, with the quiet command of "Carry on."

He didn't see Temari's wicked grin.


	5. Chapter 5

The sheet slide cool across her bare legs, like sand sifting against her skin. She thinks of this bed as her living hourglass, and time melts away over her, draping like a blanket over her all the moments that slipped out of her reach.

Her memories crumble in her heart and her hand presses to her breast, trying to keep her past from spilling out. She hasn't the time to clean up an atomic spill of childhood recollections.

Moonlight tilts her bedroom sideways, and she finds she is sliding across herself, grasping to hold on. She cannot fall. There is too much to be done in regaining balance. There is no time for that.

Her eyes burn with the light of the darkness, and she stares into nothing, her ceiling swaying as her fingers knot in her pillowcase. Is there time inside the clock? She wonders, as she watches herself the pendulum swing. Is there time left here when it is well-spent elsewhere?

A red flower blooms against her inky blindness, and the clock clicks, her heart chiming the hour. Her bedroom is only a bedroom, she compromises, curling her arms – only arms, not hands to tick away her life – around the small boy that has crawled into the blankets beside her.

The sand in her hourglass still slides hissing away.

She has time enough.


End file.
